The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society Part 31

They were at times widely scattered and are designated upon the roll as regular and visiting members:

"John H. Couch, F. W. Pettygrove, J. M. Woir, A. L. Lovejoy, J.

Applegate, S. W. Moss, Robert Newell, J. W. Nesmith, Ed Otie, H. A. G.

Lee, F. Prigg, C. E. Pickett, Wm. C. Dement, Medorum Crawford, Hiram Strait, J. Wambaugh, Wm. Cus.h.i.+ng, Philip Foster, Ransom Clark, H. H.

Hide (Hyde?), John G. Campbell, Top McGruder, W. H. Rees, Mark Ford, Henry Saffren, Noyes Smith, Daniel Waldo, P. G. Stewart, Isaac W.

Smith, Joseph Watt, Frank Ematinger, A. E. Wilson, Jacob Hoover, S. M.

Holderness, John Minto, Barton Lee, General Husted, and John P.

Brooks.

"Perhaps a more congenial, easy-going, self-satisfying club has never since congregated in the old capital city and under changed condition of affairs, especially in fas.h.i.+ons so strikingly different from the unique and richly colored costumes of that day, never will the good people of our spray-bedewed old city rest upon the like again." The names are given as history, the last quotation as a sample of Mr.

Rees's quiet humor.

Now an end of life by natural law is not a proper subject of mourning.

Willard H. Rees did not so regard it, when his generous kindness led him to collect the most praiseworthy incidents of very earliest and most unlettered of the pioneers from those coming with Lewis and Clark and Astor's enterprise to those better informed who came after he himself was here. The contributions of Willard H. Rees, J. W. Nesmith, and M. P. Deady to the Oregon Pioneer a.s.sociation publication would alone const.i.tute no mean volume of the history of Oregon, beginning with retired Canadian hunters and trappers who by cultivating the soil of Oregon and creating a magazine of supplies to the American homebuilders unawares were cultivating the seeds of civilization aided and foreseen by the Applegates, Burnetts, Waldos, Nesmiths, Rees, and others who managed a bloodless victory over the pro-British occupation of Oregon.

SHORT BIOGRAPHY OF JOSEPH HOLMAN.

Joseph Holman was born at Little Torrington, Devons.h.i.+re, England, August 20, 1815. His parents were John and Elizabeth Holman. His father was a mechanic, and manufacturer of agricultural implements, and died when Joseph was quite young, leaving two older sons. The eldest son carried on his father's business, the younger brothers living with him to learn the trade.

When Joseph was sixteen years of age, the second brother emigrated to Canada and sent such good reports of large wages for mechanics that when Joseph was eighteen his elder brother allowed him to follow, though bound to him until twenty-one. In 1833 Joseph took pa.s.sage on the s.h.i.+p "Eliza" for Canada and landed at Prince Edward's Island where the s.h.i.+p was seized for debt, which detained the pa.s.sengers some weeks, the creditors furnis.h.i.+ng codfish and potatoes only, for food.

The s.h.i.+p finally sailed for Quebec and to London, in Canada, where Joseph found his brother, and worked in that place for several years, but disliked the rough ways of that early time. He went alone to New Lisbon, Ohio, where he worked at wagon making for a year. Hearing much of the so-called West at that time, he went to Peoria, Illinois, found work and lived two years there. During that time, Jason Lee, on his way from Oregon to the East, stopped at Peoria and lectured on Oregon.

In the spring of 1839 eighteen persons agreed to go to Oregon and settle there. Joseph Holman had ideas of a large city at the mouth of the Columbia River, and he wanted to be one to help take the claim.

The party started west with horses and wagons. At Independence, Missouri, they sold the wagons and bought mules to carry packs. Mr.

Farnham was chosen captain. They traveled to Bent's Fort on the Arkansas River without mishap, and to Bent's Fort on the Platte River [generally called St. Vrain's] became demoralized. Some went back, Mr.

Farnham went to Santa Fe, others went through the next year, but Joseph Holman, with Cook, Fletcher and Kilbourn, determined to go to Oregon. While away from the fort to get dry buffalo meat for food the Indians stole their horses. They worked at the fort until they earned more horses, and late in the fall the four started alone and reached Green River, in the Rocky Mountains, and camped in a sheltered place called "Brown's Hole," also Joe Meek, Doctor Newell, Cary and others.

Joseph Holman's mechanical knowledge helped him here, for he stocked guns, made saddles for Indians, and received an extra horse and beaver skins (as good as money) in return. Doctor Newell decided to start early in the spring, with the beaver skins to Fort Hall, in Idaho, to avoid Indian war parties who would be out later on. They were caught in the snow and nearly perished. Where Doctor Newell expected to see buffalo they did not see one. They were four days without any food, until they met a Digger Indian woman who sold them her two dogs. After that they now and then killed an antelope until they reached Fort Hall where they remained three weeks to recuperate themselves and horses.

Doctor Newell remained here. The four young men left with a Hudson Bay agent for Fort Boise, but went alone from there to Walla Walla, arriving there May 1, 1840; from there down the Columbia River to Fort Vancouver, was the hardest part of the trip, especially from The Dalles to Fort Vancouver, on the north side of the Columbia. The water was high at that season of the year, had covered the Indian trail on the bank of the river, and they were obliged to lead their ponies over the bluffs to Fort Vancouver, a fact Doctor McLaughlin could hardly believe when they arrived, at 11 o'clock June 1, 1840. In the afternoon of the same day a s.h.i.+p arrived at Fort Vancouver from New York, with forty Methodist missionaries to teach and convert the Indians. A Miss Almira Phelps, from Springfield, Ma.s.sachusetts, was one, to whom Joseph was married in less than a year. He was twenty-six years of age, and even then showed a progressive spirit. The four, Mr.

Cooke, Mr. Fletcher, Mr. Kilbourn, and Joseph Holman, rode around looking for places to settle. They took up land and built a cabin. The Methodist mission employed them for a time and paid them in stock.

Joseph Holman cut the first stick of timber on the present town site of Salem, and just back of the asylum for the insane he took up his claim of land, which was a mile square. He rode a horse to the east, to the north, to the west, to the south, and staked it. Years afterward surveyors said he surveyed it correctly on his horse, a mile square. Mrs. John H. Albert, now living, was born on this land, Joseph Holman's eldest daughter. His only son, George Phelps Holman, was the first white child born in Salem, or the county.

Joseph Holman's heart and soul were for Oregon, for its building up, its prosperity. His loyalty was unbounded. He was honest, affectionate, and true.

This short statement was dictated by Mr Joseph Holman to his wife during his last illness in 1880. He was on a lounge, and told these facts, and she penciled them down and copied them June 27, 1902, in the present form.

DOc.u.mENTS.

Letter of fur traders Jedediah S. Smith, David E. Jackson, and Wm. L.

Sublette--1830.

Gives an account of the taking of the first wagons to the Rocky Mountains and of the Hudson's Bay Company post, Fort Vancouver, and its operations in the Oregon Country. An argument for the termination of the convention of 1818.

The letter of Smith, Jackson, and Sublette forms part of Senate Executive Doc.u.ments 39, 21st Congress, 2d session, pp. 21-23. The whole doc.u.ment is taken up with a consideration of "the state of the British establishments in the valley of the Columbia, and the state of the fur trade, as carried on by the citizens of the United States and the Hudson's Bay Company," as shown in the communications of Gen. W. H. Ashley, Joshua Pilcher, J. D. Smith, David E.

Jackson, and W. L. Sublette, and William Clark and Lewis Ca.s.s.

ST. LOUIS, October 29, 1830.

SIR: The business commenced by General Ashley some years ago, of taking furs from the United States territory beyond the Rocky Mountains has since been continued by Jedediah S.

Smith, David E. Jackson, and William L. Sublette, under the firm of Smith, Jackson, and Sublette. They commenced business in 1826, and have since continued it, and have made observations and gained information which they think it important to communicate to the government. The number of men they have employed has usually been from eighty to one hundred and eighty; and with these, divided into parties, they have traversed every part of the country west of the Rocky Mountains, from the peninsula of California to the mouth of the Columbia River. Pack horses, or rather mules, were at first used, but in the beginning of the present year, it was determined to try wagons, and in the month of April last, on the 10th day of the month, a caravan of ten wagons, drawn by five mules each, and two dearborns, drawn by one mule each, set out from St. Louis. We have eighty-one men in company, all mounted on mules, and these were exclusive of a party left in the mountains. Our route from St. Louis was nearly due west to the western limits of the state and thence along the Santa Fe trail about forty miles, from which the course was some degrees north of west, across the waters of the Kanzas, and up the Great Platte River, to the Rocky Mountains, and to the head of Wind River, where it issues from the mountains. This took us until the 16th of July, and was as far as we wished the wagons to go, as the furs to be brought in were to be collected at this place, which is, or was this year, the great rendezvous of the persons engaged in that business. Here the wagons could easily have crossed the Rocky Mountains, it being what is called the Southern [South] Pa.s.s, had it been desirable for them to do so, which it was not for the reason stated. For our support, at leaving the Missouri settlements, until we should get into the buffalo country, we drove twelve head of cattle, beside a milk cow. Eight of these only being required for use before we got to the buffaloes, the others went on to the head of Wind River. We began to fall in with the buffaloes on the Platte, about three hundred and fifty miles from the white settlements, and from that time lived on buffaloes, the quant.i.ty being infinitely beyond what we needed. On the fourth of August, the wagons being in the meantime loaded with furs which had been previously taken, we set out on the return to St. Louis. All the high points of the mountains then in view were white with snow, but the pa.s.ses and valleys, and all the level country, were green with gra.s.s. Our route back was over the same ground nearly as in going out, and we arrived at St. Louis on the 10th of October, bringing back the ten wagons, the dearborns being left behind; four of the oxen and the milk cow were also brought back to the settlements in Missouri, as we did not need them for provision. Our men were all healthy during the whole time, we suffered nothing by the Indians, and had no accident but the death of one man, being buried under a bank of earth that fell in upon him, and another being crippled at the same time. Of the mules, we lost but one by fatigue, and two horses stolen by the Kanzas Indians; the gra.s.s being, along the whole route going and coming, sufficient for the support of the horses and mules. The usual weight in the wagons was about one thousand eight hundred pounds. The usual progress of the wagons was from fifteen to twenty-five miles per day. The country being almost all open, level, and prairie, the chief obstructions were ravines and creeks, the banks of which required cutting down, and for this purpose a few pioneers were generally kept ahead of the caravan. This is the first time that wagons ever went to the Rocky Mountains, and the ease and safety with which it was done prove the facility of communicating overland with the Pacific Ocean. The route from the Southern Pa.s.s, where the wagons stopped, to the Great Falls of the Columbia, being easier and better than on this side of the mountains, with gra.s.s enough for horses and mules, but a scarcity of game for the support of men. One of the undersigned, to wit, Jedediah S. Smith, in his excursion west of the mountains, arrived at the post of the Hudson's Bay Company, called Fort Vancouver, near the mouth of Multnomah River. He arrived there in August, 1828, and left the 12th of March, 1829, and made observations which he deems it material to communicate to the government. Fort Vancouver is situated on the north side of the Columbia, five miles above the mouth of the Multnomah, in a handsome prairie, and on a second bank about three quarters of a mile from the river. This is the fort as it stood when he arrived there; but a large one, three hundred feet square about three quarters of a mile lower down, and within two hundred yards of the river, was commenced the spring he came away. Twelve pounders were the heaviest cannon which he saw. The crop of 1828 was seven hundred bushels of wheat, the grain full and plump, and making good flour, fourteen acres of corn, the same number of acres in peas, eight acres of oats, four or five acres of barley, a fine garden, some small apple trees, and grape vines. The ensuing spring eighty bushels of seed wheat were sown. About two hundred head of cattle, fifty horses and breeding mares, three hundred head of hogs, fourteen goats, the usual domestic fowls. They have mechanics of various kinds, to wit, blacksmiths, gunsmiths, carpenters, coopers, tinner, and baker. A good saw mill on the bank of the river five miles above, a grist mill worked by hand, but intended to work by water. They had built two coasting vessels, one of which was then on a voyage to the Sandwich Islands. No English or white woman was at the fort, but a great number of mixed blood Indian extraction, such as belong to the British fur trading establishments, who were treated as wives, and the families of children taken care of accordingly. So that everything seemed to combine to prove that this fort was to be a permanent establishment. At Fort Vancouver the goods for the Indian trade are imported from London, and enter the territories of the United States paying no duties, and from the same point the furs taken on the other side of the mountains are s.h.i.+pped. The annual quant.i.ty of these furs could not be exactly ascertained, but Mr. Smith was informed indirectly that they amounted to about thirty thousand beaver skins, besides otter skins and small furs. The beaver skins alone, at New York prices, would be worth above two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

To obtain these furs, both trapping and trading are resorted to. Various parties, provided with traps, spread over the country south of the Columbia to the neighborhood of the Mexican territory, and in 1824 and 1825 they crossed the Rocky Mountains and trapped on the waters of the Missouri River. They do not trap north of lat.i.tude 49 degrees, but confine that business to the territory of the United States.

Thus this territory, being trapped by both parties, is nearly exhausted of beavers, and unless the British can be stopped, will soon be entirely exhausted, and no place left within the United States where beaver fur in any quant.i.ty can be obtained.

The inequality of the convention with Great Britain in 1818 is most glaring and apparent, and its continuance is a great and manifest injury to the United States. The privileges granted by it have enabled the British to take possession of the Columbia River, and spread over the country south of it; while no Americans have ever gone, or can venture to go on the British side. The interest of the United States and her citizens engaged in the fur trade requires that the convention of 1818 should be terminated, and each nation confined to its own territories. By this commercial interest there are other considerations requiring the same result.

These are, the influence which the British have already acquired over the Indians in that quarter, and the prospect of a British colony, and a military and naval station on the Columbia. Their influence over the Indians is now decisive.

Of this the Americans have constant and striking proofs, in the preference which they give to the British in every particular.

In saying this, it is an act of justice to say, also, that the treatment received by Mr. Smith at Fort Vancouver was kind and hospitable; that, personally, he owes thanks to Governor Simpson and the gentlemen of the Hudson's Bay Company, for the hospitable entertainment which he received from them, and for the efficient and successful aid which they gave him in recovering from the Umquah Indians a quant.i.ty of fur and many horses, of which these Indians had robbed him in 1828.

As to the injury which must happen to the United States from the British getting the control of all the Indians beyond the mountains, building and repairing s.h.i.+ps in the tide water region of the Columbia, and having a station there for their privateers and vessels of war, is too obvious to need a recapitulation. The object of this communication being to state _facts_ to the Government, and to show the facility of crossing the continent to the Great Falls of the Columbia with wagons, the ease of supporting any number of men by driving cattle to supply them where there was no buffalo, and also to show the true nature of the British establishments on the Columbia, and the unequal operation of the convention of 1818.

These _facts_ being communicated to the Government, they consider that they have complied with their duty, and rendered an acceptable service to the administration; and respectfully request you, sir, to lay it before President Jackson.

We have the honor to be sir, yours, respectfully,

JEDEDIAH S. SMITH, DAVID E. JACKSON, W. L. SUBLETTE.

To the Hon. John H. Eaton, _Secretary of War_.

Excerpts from St. Louis papers, 1832-1848, on the migration to and settlement of Oregon.

The _Missouri Republican_, July 5, 1831.

The American Society for encouraging the settlement of Oregon Territory, propose to enlist 1000 men for the purpose, to rendezvous in this city January next. Each man will receive gratuitously a lot of land. There is said to be "an immense water power up the Wallamott or Mulnomah."

_Republican_, November 8, 1831.

An unlucky little paragraph of ours in relation to the prosperous colony at the mouth of the Columbia River has been the source of much trouble to us. We have been frequently addressed both by letter and in person for information upon the subject, without having the means of replying satisfactorily to querists. * * * We cannot now state whether the plan has been abandoned, but time has pa.s.sed by when the adventurers were to have a.s.sembled here.

The project originated in Boston, where, we believe, the princ.i.p.al officers of the society reside.

_Republican_, April 24, 1832.

OREGON COLONY.

Thirty-six persons attached to this colony arrived in this city Friday last. They have since proceeded on their way.